A woman asked me to copy her letter to the mayor. Her reality included a wheelchair, microwave mind control, Invisible Men and pages of tiny writing pinned to her coat. She asked, “Girl, how do you stay so slim?”

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Like a marathon, you shouldn't just dash into National Poetry Month. What you should do is train a little, read poetry from time to time.

Check out Borders Open-Door Poetry — very interesting, with contemporary poets reading their work and responding to important, silly and interesting questions.

And check out this great poem by the late Bill Holm, whose poetry I was introduced to in the fabulous book The Geography of Bliss. I'll share another of his poems, soon, but for now, enjoy this one.

Wedding Poem For Schele and Phil

A marriage is a risky business these daysSays some old and prudent voice inside.We don’t need twenty children anymoreTo keep the family line alive,Or gather up the hay before the rain.No law demands respectability.Love can arrive without certificate or cash.History and experience both make clearThat men and women do not hearThe music of the world in the same key,Rather rolling dissonances doomed to clash.

So what is left to justify a marriage?Maybe only the hunch that half the worldWill ever be present in any roomWith just a single pair of eyes to see it.Whatever is invisible to oneIs to the other an enormous golden lionCalm and sleeping in the easy chair.After many years, if things go rightBoth lion and emptiness are always there;The one never true without the other.

But the dark secret of the ones long married,A pleasure never mentioned to the young,Is the sweet heat made from two bodies in a bedCurled together on a winter night,The smell of the other always in the quilt,The hand set quietly on the other’s flankThat carries news from another worldLight-years away from the one insideThat you always thought you inhabited alone.The heat in that hand could melt a stone.

• Weird Al YankovicI've been known to sing "White and Nerdy" for days after listening to it, and "The Saga Begins" is by far one of the most superior parodies I've ever seen and heard. (It's still unsettling to see Al without glasses!)

• Achmed the Dead TerroristDavid nearly made me pop my stitches this summer with the help of this guy. His performance in Jeff Dunham's Christmas special was incredible, not in the least because of Guitar Guy.